Found Object, Recycled Art, Readymade or Junk Art? Ambiguity in Modern African Art

Abstract

The phenomenon of found objects and waste transmutation into works of art, dominates contemporary African art ostensibly as the new continental creative identity. Majority of contemporary African artists experiment with waste as their preferred artistic medium and find in them (waste), potent metaphors for creative expressionism. However, although this art form is rapidly gaining prominence and international acclaim, it is surrounded by equivocations emanating from available literature sources.  Discourses have emerged which attempts to theorize this genre of art but such discourses have only created varying levels of ambiguities which impedes understanding of its history, conceptuality and context in contemporary art-space. This paper reviews recent literature dealing with found object appropriation in Africa, to expose the obscurities inherent in such studies. Using discourse analysis, this review indicates the existence of ambiguities ranging from terminology devising and classification to issues of hegemonic exclusivity and problems of contextualization. On the premise of these existing gray areas, I propose an in-depth study into this modern African art type, such study should adopt a particularized system to  investigate the methodology of African found object art, its ideology and cultural motivation as basic criteria to enable our understanding and establishing of this modern art form as traditional to Africa in form, content and context and subsequently differentiate it from those of European art conventions to which it is currently erroneously likened to.

Keywords: Found Object, Readymade, Ambiguity, Junk Art, Upcycling, Surrealistic Object, Bricolage.